Ficsor took his leave. He was at the door by the time the thought occurred to Mrs Vizy.
‘Of course, her wages . . .’
‘If you please, your ladyship!’ protested the caretaker, with an air of indignation. ‘You pay her as much as you think she deserves. After you have seen what she can do.’
‘All right. We shall see.’
She invited Anna into the dining room. She ordered her to clear away the dinner and watched her closely as she did so. She instructed her how the plates should be carried, how to wash up, how to put the knives and forks away into the cutlery cabinet.
In the evening they prepared the table for supper. They arranged the plates and cutlery on the table. They put out a large white loaf since white loaves could now be bought.
Once they had made up the beds Mrs Vizy gave her a loaf of uncut cornflour bread.
‘Here is your bread and your supper,’ she said handing over a slice of cheese. ‘And this is your pillowslip.’ She pressed a red striped draw-sheet at her. ‘Put this on. Eat your supper then you may go to bed.’ She excused her.
‘Good-night, ma’am.’ The girl kissed her hand.
‘There’s no need for that,’ said Mrs Vizy but the girl kissed it again.
7
New Broom Sweeps Clean
Anna gazed at the unfamiliar kitchen.
She had been told to have supper first then go to bed.
She cut a slice of bread. She couldn’t bear even to bite into it. Both the bread and the cheese smelled of the flat.
She fumbled with the strange campbed and eventually succeeded in opening it, drew her pillow slip over her one pillow, rolled herself in the coverless eiderdown which until tonight had been Katica’s and, having blown out the candle, lay down.
‘Lordandfather – fatherloving – mypooreyes – aregently-closing – yoursthoughlord – areeveropen . . .’
This is what little Bandi prayed, and Pisti too, and even Gyuri the son of Mr Wild the warehouse owner. She had taught them all.
‘Watchoverme – ereIwaken – tomyparents – beprotector – shieldmyevery – benefactor. . .’
Then Bandi, beside whose cot lay the sofa on which she slept, would have to have the poem of the birds and the penknife.
This penknife was special: when you opened its blade birds flew out of it, a host of brightly coloured birds. The child would go to sleep thinking of this penknife and when he woke in the morning he would remember dreaming of the birds and the knife and start laughing.
Anna repeated the rhyme now and though she herself could not fully understand it it made her pleasantly drowsy. But she didn’t fall asleep. Not even though she had stayed awake for a long time last night at the Bartoses.
What time could it be? Her bed was on the wrong side, by the wall opposite the window, high up. She had never slept above street level till now. She saw in front of her the towering inner wall of the tenement block. Squares of fiery light blazed up and went out. The lodgers entered one or other minor compartment of the house, a pantry or a water-closet; they turned lights on and off. Somewhere someone was playing a piano. A woman with a beautiful voice was singing along with it. She started again and again. The walls and windows hummed, the whole house rose and fell on waves of music. Sometimes she heard a buzzing beneath her bed. Later she discovered that the piano was in fact on the floor above, directly above her.
The voice and the piano both fell silent. Silence and darkness settled round her. Now even the squares of light on the opposite wall had stopped glowing. Having grown slightly numb she felt disorientated. She searched with her eyes for the old sofa but found only the wall everywhere about her, she stretched out her fingers but touched nothing, only the emptiness of night. She thought the kitchen had spun round and that she would shortly disappear down a chasm.
High up, at the very top of the wall outside, a single light still burned. It seemed they were both keeping vigil. At first she thought it was a star but it was only a common oil-lamp. It burned brighter than a star. Lamps are invariably brighter than stars.
A little after midnight she heard the key turn in the lock outside. Having already obtained a night pass from the Romanians, Vizy was arriving home. He was whispering to his wife. Soon someone opened the door of the kitchen. Barefooted and ghostly in a long white nightdress, Anna’s mistress drifted over to her and looked down to see whether she was sleeping. She returned again a quarter of an hour later but by that time Anna did not see her for she had buried her head in the pillow and fallen asleep.
This was a matter of some importance to Mrs Vizy. Once again a stranger’s breath was mingling with the familiar air of the flat, augmenting its common store. An alien heart was beating there: someone was sheltering under their roof, a stranger in whose person friend and foe, the extremes of closeness and distance, all met. Every house has a secret guest, and here she was. However unsympathetic Katica had been, she at least was known. This new person was still a mystery. Contrary to her habit Mrs Vizy locked the doors leading to the drawing room and bathroom.
‘Are you afraid?’ asked Vizy.
‘No. But all the same. It is the first night.’
Goaded by her curiosity she woke practically with the dawn. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
The maid had already aired and mopped the rooms. How could she have done it? It was impossible. She would have had to get up at four and work so quietly that no one heard her. Now she was crouching behind the writing desk in the study in that blue calico dress and the men’s shoes Mrs Vizy had noted in her pack.
Mrs Vizy merely nodded. She knew it spoiled a servant to praise her straight away. She got her to grind some coffee and boil a pan of milk. She sent her down to the baker’s, had her lay the table for breakfast and sent her to call his excellency from the bathroom.
He was shaving before the mirror, his face covered with lather. He looked rather like a snowman. Anna silently stole over to him and tried to tap his hand.
‘Careful!’ he cried, with great severity, ‘I might cut you!’ He held the flashing blade high above his head. ‘You are the new girl? What’s your name? Your family name? Your father’s? He sounds Hungarian,’ decided Vizy, as usual preferring to take a broad political approach to these matters. ‘Farm labourers. Correct. Smallholders.’
Breakfast was elegant. Ignorant of their habits, the new girl had spread the clean yellow tablecloth used only for special occasions. The silver teaspoons chimed in the old idyllic way. When Anna took the milk pan out Mrs Vizy carefully followed her with her eyes. ‘Looks a sound girl.’
Vizy frowned. He didn’t approve of confidence so lightly bestowed: the disillusion that might follow would be all the more bitter. Hadn’t it always begun like this? His wife thought herself a good judge of character and would draw far-reaching conclusions from the slightest evidence but she referred to every new servant, in the first twenty-four hours at least, as ‘a sound girl’ and trusted that this one ‘was not like the others’. She garlanded them with more attributes than a poet decking out his verses. Then would follow the disappointments. By the second day there would be no more talk of sound girls. On the fourth day she would remark offhand that the girl was ‘a little slow’, or ‘a touch indolent’. Next she would object to her manner. The climax would follow with dramatic speed. By the end of the week she would call him aside with a significant gesture, shape her lips into a silent hiss, and almost inaudibly tremble out the words, ‘she steals . . . just imagine it, she steals’. Finally would come the damning verdict: ‘and she’s a whore, just like the rest’.
Why fool ourselves. Let’s sleep on it. All new brooms sweep clean.
The new broom did indeed sweep clean. She would grab her basket and run down to the market in her unlaced shoes. One didn’t have to wait for her, she didn’t hang about, she returned immediately. The table was cleared, the table was laid. It was like the magic table in the fairy tale. There was order and silence.
She knew the shops
and stalls of the district. She didn’t lose her way in town. When they sent her further afield she managed to find her way back from Vámház körút, even from Boráros tér. She was not the country bumpkin they took her for. Her three years in Pest had modified her country habits. Her walk was quiet, she blew her nose silently, she spoke in a correct manner. It was only her accent that occasionally betrayed her, and the fact that sometimes, forgivably, she used too high a form of honorific for Mrs Vizy, addressing her as my gracious lady instead of as my good lady.
But she did have one peculiarity: she didn’t eat.
The corn bread and the cheese she had left on the first day was served up again the following night. Still she didn’t touch it. She simply stirred her coffee and pushed it aside. Nothing passed her lips. On the third day she ate an apple while at the Ficsors’. This at least was untainted by the smell.
Despite all her efforts she couldn’t get used to the smell of the place. Her nose was as keen as a dog’s and protested against it. The effect of 238 Attila utca was intense: she gave an involuntary shiver whenever she caught sight of it, even from a distance. Yet it was a very, pleasant house. It was after all the house of Kornél Vizy. It had the dainty air of a petit palais. The outside wall was embellished with stucco roses, its balconies, delicate as swallows’ nests, were lightly tacked on. The two at the top, belonging to the Drumas and the Moviszters, were of the open kind, but the Vizys’ was glazed like a veranda with a shaded lamp dangling from the ceiling: they could eat there if they chose. The residence accommodated only these three professional households. Two boards fixed to the wall proclaimed: ‘Dr Szilárd Druma, Solicitor, Specialist in Commercial Law and Litigation’ and ‘Dr Miklós Moviszter, General Practitioner. Appointments 11–12 a.m. 3-7 p.m.
One day, having been sent up to the Moviszters’ to borrow some eggs, Anna discovered the source of that beautiful piano playing. The doctor’s attractive wife was sitting at the piano in a low-cut nightdress, her pale jewelled fingers straying over the keys, singing at the top of her voice.
She got to know the servants too. Etel, her apron-strings hung with bunches of keys like some familial patron saint, ruled the roost from her large well-lit kitchen. It was the centre of her operations. Here she made all the decisions regarding what should be cooked or served for supper. Here she could play the tyrant, and even, occasionally, curse her employers, who lived in fear and trembling of her. She slept every afternoon from three to half-past four and between these hours the Moviszters were obliged to creep about like mice, the doctor himself answering the door to his patients. She would drink a bottle of brown ale both at dinner and supper and tended to move rather awkwardly these days owing to her weight which had much increased due to her incessant consumption of strudels. She would offer these to Anna.
The Drumas’ maid was at first a little unwilling to lower herself to this level. Stefi’s previous employer had been a count with a house in the precincts of the Vár. Having grown tired of high society she sought a bit of quiet and a power-base of her own, which she found at the lawyer’s flat. She spoke with benevolent condescension of the Drumas, for they were young and their means did not yet allow them to furnish their apartment in a fully becoming manner. In fact she took it on herself to educate them into certain habits of refinement. She would ceremoniously announce the guests, and served the butter in delicately serrated pats. She continued to wear a white apron and a black dress. She referred to herself as ‘the staff’. She read the Christian journals, associated with office girls and attached herself particularly to Druma’s secretary with whom she would conspicuously link arms as they walked, hoping in this way to be taken for a secretary herself.
The two servants took Anna into their confidence. They quizzed her about the Vizys’ diet, came down to use the Vizys’ phone when their own was out of order and invited Anna to join them for a game of cards in the afternoon with beans and nuts as stakes. They had a rather low opinion of Mrs Vizy. They called her a miser, a half-wit who communicated with the souls of the dead. They kept asking Anna if she were satisfied with her situation. She said she was. What could she have said? After all she couldn’t account even to herself for her ever increasing sense of disgust.
She simply couldn’t get used to it. She quickly adapted to electricity. They showed her how to handle it. Anna made use of it, as they did. Not that she understood anything of electricity, but then neither did they. When she turned on the light she saw the room brighten but still checked to see the bulb was burning. It was the same with the telephone. For the first few days she talked in sepulchral tones into the wrong end until she discovered her mistake. Thereafter she relaxed into an easy acquaintance with it. She had seen greater marvels out on the plains. She simply accepted the fact that such things existed.
Other things disturbed her, and the longer she remained, the stranger they became. Quite insignificant things. Once for example, when she happened to hear that her master was called Kornél, she really felt she could stay no longer. The stove, which she imagined was green, turned out to be white. The drawing-room wall on the other hand was not white but green, the table not swelling and circular but hexagonal and low, one door opened inwards the other outwards. These constant minor surprises shook her entire being. There was a Macquart bouquet from which tall peacock feathers obtruded that effected her with a peculiar trembling. She felt the ‘eyes’ were watching her and she always looked aside when she passed them.
Then, when she raised her eyes, there was her mistress, her hair uncombed and standing straight as if she were in a fury, waiting to vent her anger on her. Since the parquet creaked she heard everything. Mrs Vizy was anxious to protect her flat from draughts (which brought on tooth-and ear-ache) and from light (which irritated her). She was forever at Anna’s heels, following her like a policeman. She would lecture her with well-meaning cantankerousness: ‘Not that way, girl . . . this way . . . put it down on the table . . . not for Heaven’s sake on the edge where it’s bound to fall off . . .’ As a result Anna placed everything in the centre of the table. Her mistress, however, would correct and adjust the objects just sufficiently to put herself in the right. Nothing was good enough for her. If Anna was quiet she demanded to know why, if on the other hand she talked of how it was at the Bartoses, she was quickly reminded that things were done differently here and that she shouldn’t follow her own silly notions but listen to those wiser than her.
Chiefly though Anna missed the children, who had been delightful playmates and animated toys to her. After all she had been paid as their companion. She’d have liked to have someone to nurse here, someone to whom she could tell tales and recite verses. But what could she do with these solemn adults whose private shuttered lives were continually rubbing up against hers?
Hardly was the first week over when a great row exploded. She was just sweeping the bedroom and listening to Mrs Moviszter playing the piano upstairs when she noticed a little dolls’ house on the wardrobe. Its wooden furniture was covered in white lacquer, there was a gilded mirror, a tiny handbasin with a tiny jug on the glass shelf beside it, and a bed with a red silk eiderdown, under which slumbered a doll with genuine hair. She stood on a chair to wipe the little gilded mirror. Suddenly she dropped it. It broke into a thousand little pieces.
Instantly, Mrs Vizy was there.
‘What is broken! Oh!’ she screamed. ‘You idiot!’
Anna leapt down from the chair and started gathering the fragments, trying to piece them together. The woman knocked them out of her hand.
‘Leave it. It’s done,’ she cried and burst into tears.
‘I’ll pay for it,’ whispered Anna.
‘Pay for it? Can one pay for something like this? It was a memento. My daughter’s. Quick, the broom.’
While Anna swept she stood behind her and lectured her.
‘You are a clumsy oaf. Katica never broke things. But I’ll deduct it from your wages. I will. That will teach you a lesson.’
Mrs Viz
y spent the rest of the day fretting about the significance of the broken mirror. But then what had the seven grains of rice meant? She couldn’t reconcile the two. She remembered Mrs Wild’s caution that the girl’s work was ‘not always of the top quality’ and that she had ‘not yet developed all the necessary skills’. She breaks things, thought Mrs Vizy. It looks as though this one breaks things.
That evening Anna ran down to the Ficsors to announce that she was leaving. She would give notice on the first of the month. The caretaker and his wife were anxious to know the reason why, but she could only shrug her shoulders and say she couldn’t get used to it.
Ficsor, who had been sprawling on the sofa, took his pipe down from its hook and started berating her. He threatened her with her stepmother. He would send her home all right, her stepmother loved her so much she could hardly wait for her to return! Then he chased her back upstairs. Anna never again considered leaving. She preferred to stop thinking altogether.
Only at night, when she stared at the solitary lamp on the wall outside, did her heart begin to ache. She would never get used to this place.
8
The Phenomenon
In the end she did get used to it. There came the day of the great washing. Mountains of grey sheets and blankets, shirts and underwear rose before her, the dirty deathly sweat of the revolution still clinging to them. The steam made her pleasantly light-headed.
She boiled the water in the pan. Her sleeves rolled up, she knelt beside the tub, beetling away at the cloth. Her fingers played and puddled sensuously in the warm soapy scum. She lugged great baskets of washing about from place to place, shook the cloth, pleated it, wound it through the mangle. Her tablecloths were soft as lawn, her collars shone like glass.
Spring-cleaning took three days. In order to prepare they emptied out the drawers. Suddenly, as in a game of hide and seek, things appeared in unexpected places. They shook one casket and nine regionally minted gold coins rolled out with a sly inviting giggle. They had to accommodate themselves to the game and chase them down. But they found plenty of other things too. There were the two door handles at the bottom of a chest, the Swiss francs between the pages of a book (francs which had been put aside in case of a sudden need to flee the country), the locket wrapped in newspapers at the bottom of a tub of curds, and the single earring. In the master’s desk they discovered a packet of Russian tea, a kilo of lentils in a paper bag and two tins of Belgian sardines.
Anna Edes Page 7
